The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [78]
He let his instruments clatter to the table. He was getting nowhere. Proclivity for easy death caused major challenges; there had to be a fire burning in the heart’s furnace and movements of chylus for the castellan to attach anything to a living body. Any fool could graft material to a corpse once the liver stopped production; an inert body was a lost cause.
What the castellan needed was either a different sort of creature or a way to come up with a furnace of his own, an external one that would keep subjects alive whether the bodies cooperated or not.
Conjuring images of this innovation, and of how it might work, the castellan rested for a while. Thanks to the frailties of his own humours, and of the pumps that circulated them, his energies waned readily of late. He was an old man. Over the past weeks—even months—research had been fruitless. Devotions flagged.
Also, Terra Bella’s visit had disturbed him more than he liked to admit.
In younger days, after seceding, he had hoped his daughter would be able to keep control of the city, perhaps even restore Nowy Solum to previous glories, but with every encounter he was reminded that the poor girl was as inefficient and fragile as he had been.
A son, thought the castellan. Like his daughter had said, he should have had a son.
What would happen when both he and Terra Bella were gone? The line of castellans and chatelaines, finished. . . .
He wanted to go to the window just then, to look out thoughtfully, but it had rained earlier and rain brought disease down from the clouds, so he just brushed idly at the blue corpse of the cobali with his hand, holding the dead face and peering into the glazed, coppery eyes. The creatures were annoying at best, though he conceded that perhaps they might harbour a remote intelligence and have primitive notions, like himself, of what challenges a family might represent.
He imagined for a moment that to catch such creatures must be a difficult task for the unscrupulous and rather overweight thief known as Tully.
Given the chance, cobali could take a nasty chunk from one’s hand—if one’s hand came too close to the round little mouths and pinsharp teeth. More than once the castellan had been forced to smash his fist down on a specimen that had fought back or had sunk its fangs into the meat of his thumb; when his mind wandered (as it often did), he could be distracted enough to let cobalis bite him.
He glanced at the third and final creature, watching as it tried to make itself smaller against the table, cowering, chattering. Did he have the energy to try again?
He did not reach for the beast. Nor pick up his tools. The small arms and legs, boney like a frog’s, had been crudely sewn together. The thread that bound the limbs was looped over a hook set into the tabletop.
This specimen was female.
What had Terra Bella said? Trapping the beasts was no longer permissible? What ridiculous bills she passed, what ridiculous pastimes. He shook his head. His daughter, too, was in need of a rest, a change of setting—
From outside the window of the dungeon came faint grunts and scrapes and a gruff curse: someone scaled the tower. Tully. Had to be Tully. No one else was permitted to come this high. Bringing another batch of cobali, no doubt, to cut up and kill. Timing was good. Only one left. Had he conjured Tully with his thoughts?
“Friends arrive,” he told the frightened creature, which hissed at him, so the castellan turned from his work table to watch Tully’s massive hands appear—first the knuckles of one, then of the second—on the window ledge. One day the man would fall. The castellan would not be heartbroken but would certainly struggle for a means to get more specimens.
A hairy forearm, big as a roast, then Tully’s ugly, shaggy head, red-faced, straining in the window. Tully grimaced further when he saw the castellan. “Don’t elp me, it’s all right. Just stand there.”
The castellan ignored the comments. “I ask you to wear a mask when you visit me, man. Are you well? If you have any ailments, or feel